I think it would be great to see third-party applications pick up the slack in the meantime. Basically, having an app that lets you use any supported fediverse account to interact with a specific paradigm, whether it's community threads or microblogs.
For example, I'm replying to you now from Mastodon since I want to use federation to the fullest, but copying urls from Kbin every time is laborious. Having an app that uses my Mastodon account and presents like Kbin would be the dream.
Well, the Twitter-esque format also extends to Misskey and Pleroma, and there are tons of those accounts interacting seamlessly with Mastodon instances. So in a way those microblogging instances face the same issue you're describing between Lemmy and Kbin. In any case, I'm a fan of 'threadiverse' as a term for the Reddit-like instances.
You're absolutely right, presenting an awesome website first and allowing the true nature of the fediverse to sneak up on people is a great way to handle it. Even if someone learns about the fediverse as a whole first somehow, they'll need to figure out what 'portal' into it makes the most sense anyway.
For real, that part made me do a double take. It's crazy to think some redditors are so far gone that they would frame it that way.
Yeah, digging into the fediverse is making things feel fresh again.
It's giving everything a new spin since it's all interconnected in a way only the open web could achieve. For example, I've upvoted and replied to this from Mastodon.
If it's already this awesome, I can't wait to see where it's headed.